Since the late nineties of the last century, the basic criteria of effective and engaging web design have remained achieving ‘professional’ and ‘easy-to-navigate’ designs. Researches have showed that visitors take decisions about the site within 7 seconds of landing on the Homepage. According to the researches by the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility Study, visitors reach a judgment largely on the basis of the visual impression of the site. Professional look of a site enhances credibility of the business.
Non-intuitive and outdated website designs are regarded as unprofessional designs that hurt the image of the business in a big way. If careful observation of your site and honest comparison of that with other business websites make you realize that the existing design seems to be quite outdated, it is a wise decision to plan for a redesign. A major shift from the goal of your business can also be a major reason for required redesigning. Change does not mean a complete revamp of the site without doing prior plannings. Redesigning can prove to be a bit expensive for small companies with limited budget. So, it is very important to focus on the reasons that signal at the requirement of a redesign procedure for the site. You need to ask yourself a few questions to get the answers.
1. Is the site still performing? What does the analytics say?
It is important to notice whether enough conversions are happening through the site or not. It is important to have a look at the bounce rate on the website. Try to identify different metrics to get feedback on how well the site is performing. If you have already been tracking all these metrics from quite some time now, it would not be much difficult to find out if there is a trend in the wrong direction. Merely looking straight at the website can help you find out the problems that require rectification. On the other hand if the site is working perfectly well, there is no point wasting much money on the redesigning procedure.
2. What elements of the site do you like and what you do not?
It is not a wise decision to just arbitrarily change every element of the site just for the sake of a change. This way you might end up loosing some of the most important elements that viewers found useful. Random changes can change the site but can hardly make it any better. Only learning from the previous revisions can help in making the site better. A usability test is needed to be conducted for knowing what is working in favor of your site and what is not. It is important to do away with the negative features of the website keeping positive ones unchanged. A preview can prove that the site does not need anything but a few minor rectifications on the site.
3. Is the present design of your site is in parity with the current internet standards?
There are certain page elements that have been put in certain positions found through tried and tested methods. Changing their positions can make the process of web browsing difficult for users. Following these rules are like unwritten guidelines, deviating from which might make the process of navigating or searching for information difficult for the visitors. Users do not have much time to keep searching for all the elements in unfamiliar positions. So, it is not a good idea to keep on changing the position of different elements on a site.
In the attempt to include high end technical features to their websites, often different web designers end up hiding important parts of the web content under colorful and gawky graphics. That is never going to impress the visitors.
4. Does the present goal of the business demand a new design?
Of late, if your business procedures have gone through a sea change a redesign might be required for your site. Similarly, expansion of business to new areas or focus of the business on new tasks can also demand redesigning that can accommodate the required changes.
There are several reasons why the website of a company might need to be redesigned. This blog focuses on a few of the important points that can be the reason why your company needs to think about website redesigning.
John Atkins, a multiple business owner. He is an experienced member of web marketing association and Orange County website design company. Therefore, he knows what is important to make business more suitable.